I’m doing some research at the moment on installing VMWare, looks like it might work…or might not. Basically their HCL (Hardware Compatibility List) are enterprise level servers, where as I will be installing  on a “white box” aka home level hardware. So none of my hardware is “officially” supported or gauranteed to work, but after some research it looks like I should be able to get almost everything, if not everything, functioning. I checked out some “white box” HCLs, which are lists of hardware that punters like me have tested and successfully got VMWare working on. It looks like the CPU (Intel Q6600) is supported, my Intel Pro 1000 NIC is also supported, but I will need to purchase an additional one as the on board Marvel Yukon LAN controller isn’t supported (I need 2 for Routing / Quality of Service / Bandwidth Control). The main issue that I would face is the onboard RAID / SATA controller, an Intel ICH10R, which apparently might need a bit of tweaking to work.

So I guess the question is, can I be bothered going to all the effort of getting it to work…currently I am unsure. Time to ponder over it all.